Welcome Time Travellers to this weeks Writers Roundup number 6.
In this weeks roundup, I talk about:
– My writing week. – My debut Author Signing Event – How to prevent being scammed, Brent Spiners birthday, My Author friend does a cover reveal. and more.
Time Clones book 2 progress update
I have got up to page 42 in the editing phase this week. I use MS Word to edit the first draft, and manually checked it through. In the next edit, I shall be using Grammarly or Pro Writing Aid to go through and spellcheck, and grammar check the book. After that, I shall get MS Word to read it to me, so that I haven’t missed anything.
Last week I mentioned that I would be doing a debut signing event at WHSmith, and this week I have been busy preparing for it. I designed and ordered my Roller Banner, and created some posters too. The book stands have arrived, and now I need to put in an order for some books. After that, I plan on setting up a table, and testing to see which ways I want it to be set up. Everything seems to be going well so far, and I am really excited for April 6th to come along.
What have you been up to this week?
Review of Things 3. Not just another productivity app.
Whilst reading Joanna Penn – Productivity for Authors, I noticed that one of the apps she uses is called Things 3. As a techie who has tried literally thousands of apps before, I was wondering what was different about this, and hey… if Joanna Penn uses it, I am guessing it must be good. Things 3 is a todo app, but this doesn’t just create lists and lists of stuff to do. It does do that, but in a different way. You can create projects… then add lists to each of these projects, and finally add tasks and subtasks to the lists. Each project has a mini pie chart, and based on how many tasks in your list, you can see a visual representation of how many tasks you have completed in the pie chart.
But there’s more. For me, I always like to log what I have done, and so many times in the past, I have clicked a dot on a task, it’s disappeared, and I have no record of what I have done, or when I did it. Things 3 has this covered in a simple Logbook, which shows you what tasks you completed and when.
You can add deadlines, and tell the app when you want a task to occur, which turns it into a combined task and event. Keeping these in your projects is a great way to stay organised, but how can you see what is scheduled when? Instead of scrolling through your projects and looking at each task, you have something called the Upcoming section. Clicking this button brings up a list calendar, with focus in this week, where you can see what you need to do, and which date you need to do it. As you go past this week on the list, you see that Things 3 arranged the lists in months, so you can quickly scroll through and find what you want.
There is a Today section which you can put into order of all the tasks you need to do, and what project they belong to which is great, because as you go through the tasks, you watch them just disappear into the logbook.
This is just a small offering of what this app has to give, including an incredibly good tutorial which is in the shape of a task list. There is much more than this, and if you fancy trying it free for 15 days, click this link.
https://culturedcode.com/things/support/articles/2803551/
The downside is, it’s quite expensive, rolling in at £49.99 for the Mac version, £19.99 for iPad, and £9.99 for the iPhone version. While this sounds expensive, I can honestly say that this has revolutionised the way I work, and I actually get more done. The good news is that there is a trial version app for the Mac, just search for “Things 3 Trial version” in your search engine.
Have you tried Things 3?
My Author friend Ruby Roe sells out her kickstarter in less than 3 minutes.
When Ruby Roe (fantasy lesbian spice author) put her latest offerings on kickstarter, she was not expecting it to reach the amount that she had set, and she was completely blown away when it was completely funded in less than three minutes.
Last time I checked, she was close to reaching £15,000 (of £1,000) and she still has over two weeks left.
Congratulations Ruby Roe, and well done 🙂
If you’re interested in funding her, check out this link.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rubyroe/special-edition-nsfw-lesbian-vampire-romance-hardcovers?ref=discovery
Have you tried kickstarter?
I bought some more books.
This week I have grabbed a copy of Julia Scotts Formatting formula book which is all about Formatting your books, ready for release, and also grabbed a copy of Marcus Sheridan – They ask, you answer, which is all about digital marketing. Talking about digital marketing, I have enrolled on a Digital Marketing course, yay. 🙂
Health
The no sugar, no bread diet is going well. I treated myself to a subway yesterday, but apart from that, no sugar, and no bread for two weeks now, wooohoo. The benefits are remarkable. I have lost weight, seem to be focussing much more, and have virtually no pain at all in my left hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder, with the pain in my right arm getting less and less every day.
What do you do to stay healthy?
That’s all for this week, if you have any questions, or would like to answer any of the questions above, please type here in the comments, or email me brettjackson@brettishbooks.com
Until next time, happy reading 🙂
– Brett